Miss Mildred Fisher was one of the happiest of women, and this was the
result of her own peculiar temperament, although she enjoyed the
endowments of a kind fate, for she came of a good family and had a fine
fortune in expectation. Her resolute intention was to make the best of
everything. With a strong, fresh, buoyant physique and an indomitable
spirit it became evident to her in the early stages of this effort that
the world is a fairly pleasant planet to live on. Her red hair--a
capital defect in those days, when Titian's name was never associated
with anything so unfashionable, and which bowed to the earth the soul of
many an otherwise deserving damsel--was most skilfully manipulated, and
dressed in fleecy billows, usually surmounted with an elaborate comb of
carved tortoise-shell, but on special occasions with a cordon of very
fine pearls, as if to attract the attention that other flame-haired
people avoided by the humblest coiffure. By reason of this management it
was described sometimes as auburn, and even golden, but this last was
the aberration usually of youths who had lost their own heads, red and
otherwise, for Mildred was a bewildering coquette. She had singularly
fine hazel eyes, which she used rather less for the purpose of vision
than for the destruction of the peace of man. Her complexion of that
delicate fairness so often concomitant of red hair did not present the
usual freckles. In fact it was the subject of much solicitous care. She
wore so many veils and mufflers that her identity often might well be a
matter of doubt as far as her features could be discerned, and Seymour,
being a very glib young lieutenant, once facetiously threatened her with
arrest for going masked and presumably entertaining designs pernicious
to the welfare of the army. That she did entertain such designs, in a
different sense, was indeed obvious, for with her determination to make
the best of everything, Miss Fisher had resolved to harass the heart of
the invader the moment a personable man with a creditable letter of
introduction presented himself. For she "received the Yankees," as the
phrase went, while others closed their doors and steeled their hearts in
bitterness.
"We _all_ receive the Yankees," she was wont to say smilingly. "It is a
family failing with us. My father and five brothers in the Confederate
vanguard are waiting now to receive Yankees--as many Yankees as care to
come to Bear-grass Creek."
"Oh, Miss Fisher!" remonstrated the gay young lieutenant, perceiving her
drift; "how can you consign me so heartlessly to six red-handed
Rebels!"
"Only red-headed as yet, fiery,--_all_ of them! They'll be red-handed
enough after you and they come to blows!"
This mimic warfare had a certain zest, and many were the youths among
the officers of the garrison who liked to "talk politics" in this vein
with "Sister Millie," as she was often designated in jocose allusion to
the five fiery-haired brothers. And indeed, as the Fisher family was so
numerously represented in the Confederate army, she considered that her
Southern partisanship was thus comprehensively demonstrated, and she
felt peculiarly at liberty to make merry with the enemy if the enemy
would be merry in turn.
Very merry and good-natured the enemy was pleased to be as far as she
was concerned. They wrote home for social credentials. They secured
introductions from brother-officers who had the entree, and especially
courted for this purpose were two elderly colonels who had been
classmates of her father's at West Point, where he was educated,
although he had resigned from the army many years ago. The two had
sought and naturally had found a cordial welcome at the home of his
wife, sister, and mother. It was natural, too, that they should feel and
exert a sort of prudential care of the household, in the midst of
inimical soldiers, and although their ancient companion-in-arms was in
an adverse force hardly fifty miles away, they regarded this as merely
the political aspect of the situation, which did not diminish their
amity and bore no relation to their personal sentiment, as they came and
went in his house on the footing of friends of the family. Now and again
the incongruity was brought home to them by some audacity of Mildred
Fisher's.
"If you should meet papa, Colonel Monette," she said one day as one of
these elderly officers was going out to command a scouting
expedition--"if you _should_ meet papa, don't fail to reintroduce
yourself, and give him our prettiest compliments."
The elderly officer was a literal-minded campaigner, and as he put his
foot in the stirrup he felt rather dolorously that if ever he did meet
Guy Fisher again, it would probably be at point-blank range where one
would have to swallow the other's pistol ball.
The war, however, was seldom so seriously regarded at the Fisher
mansion, one of the fine modern houses of the town,--brick with heavy
limestone facings and much iron grille work, perched up on a double
terrace, from which two flights of stone steps descended to the
pavement. The more youthful officers contrived to import fruits and
hothouse flowers, the fresh books and sheet music of the day, and they
stood by the piano and wagged their heads to the march in "Faust," which
was all the rage at that time, and sped around nimbly to the vibrations
of its waltz, that might have made a pair of spurs dance. She had a
very pretty wit of an exaggerated tenor, and it seemed to whet the
phrase of every one who was associated with "The Fair One with the
Equivocal Locks," as an imitator of her methods had dubbed her.
No order was so strictly enforced as to touch her mother's and her
aunt's household. Their poultry roosted in peace. Their firearms were
left by officers conducting searches through citizens' houses and
confiscating pistols, guns, and knives.
"_We_ are as capable of armed rebellion as ever," she would declare
joyously.
Miss Fisher's favorite horse bore her airy weight as jauntily down the
street as if no impress had desolated equestrian society. On these
occasions she was always accompanied by two or three officers, sometimes
more, and there was a fable in circulation that once the cavalcade was
so numerous that the guard was turned out at the fort, the sentries
mistaking the gayly caparisoned approach for the major general
commanding the division and his mounted escort.
She sang in a very high soprano voice and with a considerable degree of
culture, but one may be free to say that her rendering of "Il Bacio" and
"La Farfalletta" was by no means the triumph of art that it seemed to
Seymour, and it was suggested to the mind of several of the elder
officers that there ought to be something more arduous for him to do
than to languish over the piano in a sentimental daze, fairly
hypnotized by the simpler melodies--"Her bright smile haunts me still"
and "Sweet Evangeline."
Serious thoughts were sometimes his portion, and Vertnor Ashley now and
again received the benefit of them.
"I heard some news when I was in town to-day--and I don't believe it,"
Seymour said as he sat on a camp-stool on the grass in front of the
colonel's tent.
The so-called "street" of the cavalry encampment lay well to the rear.
Hardly a sound emanated therefrom save now and then the echo of a step,
the jingling of a spur or sabre, and sometimes voices in drowsy
talk--perhaps a snatch of song or the thrumming of a guitar. A sort of
luminous hush pervaded the atmosphere of the sunny spring afternoon. The
shadows slanted long on the lush blue-grass that, despite the trampling
to which it had been subjected, sent a revivifying impetus from its
thickly interlaced mat of roots and spread a turf like dark rich velvet.
The impulse of bloom was rife throughout nature--in a sort of praise
offering for the grace of the spring. Humble untoward sprigs of
vegetation, nameless, one would think, unnoticed, must needs wear a tiny
corolla or offer a chalice full of dew--so minute, so apart from
observation, that their very creation seemed a work of supererogation.
The dandelions' rich golden glow was instarred along the roadside, and
there was a bunch of wood violets in the roots of the maple near
Ashley's head, the branches of the tree holding far down their dark
garnet blossoms with here and there clusters of flat wing-like
seed-pods, striped with green and brown. A few paces distant was a
tulip-tree, gloriously aflare with red and yellow blooms through all its
boughs to the height of eighty feet, and between was swung Ashley's
hammock with Ashley luxuriously disposed therein. His eyes were on the
infinite roseate ranges of the Great Smoky Mountains in the amethystine
distance; the purple Chilhowee darkly loomed closer at hand, and about
the foot-hills was belted the placid cestus of tents, all gleaming
white, while the splendid curves of the river, mirroring the sky, vied
with the golden west. Nothing could have more picturesquely suggested
the warrior in his hours of ease. The consciousness of one's own graces
ought to add a zest to their value, especially when vanity is as
absolutely harmless as Vertnor Ashley's enjoyment of his own good
opinion of himself.
"What news? Why don't you believe it? Grape-vine?" asked Ashley.
(Grape-vine was the telegraph of irresponsible rumor.)
"No--no--nothing fresh from the army. I heard a rumor to-day about Miss
Fisher--that she is engaged to be married."
"I am not surprised--the contrary would surprise me."
Seymour looked alarmed. "Had you heard it, too?"
"No; but from what I have seen of 'Sister Millie,' as they call her
about here, I should say she is a fine recruiting officer."
There was an interval of silence, while Ashley swung back and forth in
the hammock and Seymour sat in a clumped posture on the camp-stool, his
hands on his knees, and his gloomy eyes on the square toes of his new
boots. At length he resumed:--
"Did you ever hear of a fellow that hails from somewhere near here named
Lloyd?"
"Lawrence Lloyd?"
"That's the man," said Seymour.
"I've heard of him. That's the Lloyd place a little down the river,--old
brick house, but all torn down now--burned by Gibdon's men; good-sized
park, or 'grove,' as they call it. That's the man, is it? Commanded some
Rebel cavalry in the Bear-grass Creek skirmish."
"Fought like a bear with a sore head--mad about his house, I suppose."
"If I _knew_ that Miss Fisher was engaged to him, I would send her a
barrel or two of fine old books that I rescued from Gibdon's
men--thought I'd save 'em for the owner. They made a bonfire of the
library there."
"Lloyd used 'em up in a raid last fall--Gibdon's fellows. I don't blame
'em. But, say Miss Fisher has not been fair to me if she is engaged to
that man."
"I always thought Miss Fisher was particularly fair--owing to a
sun-bonnet, rather than to a just mind."
"You think she would treat me as she has--encourage me to make a fool of
myself--if she is engaged to another man?"
"I think she is likelier to be engaged to five than 'another.'"
"You should not say that, Ashley," retorted Seymour, gravely. "It is not
appropriate. You should not say that," he urged again.
"Oh, I mean no offence, and certainly no disrespect to the lovely Miss
Fisher, who is my heart's delight. But you have heard the five-swain
story?"
As Seymour looked an inquiry--
"Five Rebs in camp, all homesick, very blue, on a Sunday morning," began
Ashley, graphically; "all sitting on logs, each brooding over his
fiancee's ivory-type. And, as misery loves company, one sympathized with
another, and, by way of boastfulness, showed the beautiful counterfeit
presentment of his lady-love. Their clamors brought up the rest of the
five, and _each_ had the identical photograph of Miss Millie Fisher. She
was engaged to all five! There was nothing else they could do--so they
held a prayer-meeting!"
"What bosh!" exclaimed Seymour, fretfully. "People are always at some
extravagant story about her like that. It isn't true, of course."
"It is as much like her as if it were true," Ashley declared laughingly.
The serious, not to say petulant traits of Seymour were intensified by
the conscious jeopardy of his happiness, and the continual doubt in his
mind as to whether he had any ground for hope at all.
"By George! if I knew she was engaged--or--if I knew--anything at all
about anything--I'd cut it all, and give it up. I don't want to be a
source of amusement to her--or to be made a show of. Sometimes, I pledge
you my word, I feel like a dancing bear."
"Miss Fisher has something of the style of a bear-ward, it must be
confessed," said Ashley. "I fancied at one time she had a notion of
getting a chain on me--she is enterprising, you know."
Then, after a moment, "Why _don't_ you cut it all, Mark?"
"Oh," cried Seymour, with an accent of positive pain, "I can't.
Sometimes I believe she _does_ care--she makes me believe it."
"Well," smiled Ashley, banteringly, "you dance very prettily--not a bit
clumsily--a very creditable sort of bear."
Another interval of silence ensued.
"I blame Baynell for all this," said Seymour, sullenly.
"Why? Is he a rival?"
"No. But it was not at all serious--I wasn't so dead gone, I mean--when
I wanted him to take me to the Roscoes'. If I had had some other place
to visit--some other people to know--some distraction of a reasonable
social circle, she couldn't have brought me to such a--a--"
"--state of captivity," suggested Ashley.
"Well, you know, seeing nobody else of one's own sort--and a charming
girl--and nothing to do but to watch her sing--and hear her talk--and
all the other men wild about her--and--it's--it's--"
"You'll forget it all before long," suggested the consolatory Ashley.
"You know we are here to-day and gone to-morrow, in a sense that General
Orders make less permanent than Scripture. If the word should come to
break camp and march--how little you would be thinking of Miss Fisher."
"I suppose you were never in love, Ashley," Seymour said, a trifle
drearily, adding mentally, "except with yourself!"
"I!" exclaimed Ashley, twirling his mustache. "Oh, I have had my sad
experiences, too--but I have survived them--and partially forgotten
them."
"I have no interest now in going to the Roscoes'. Mrs. Fisher offered to
introduce me. She and Miss Millie are going there to-morrow to some sort
of a sewing-circle--they just want an officer's escort through the
suburbs, I know. That sewing-circle is a fraud, and ought to be
interdicted. They pretend to sew and knit for the hospitals here and
Confederate prisoners, and I feel sure they smuggle the lint and clothes
and supplies through the lines to Rebels openly in arms. I hate to go."
"Well, now, I'll engage to eat all the homespun cotton shirts that Miss
Fisher ever makes for the Rebel in arms, or any other man. You need have
no punctilio on that score."
"Oh, it isn't that. I hate to meet Baynell--what is he staying on there
for? He is as rugged now as ever in his life. Is he in love with the
widow?"
"He has a queer way of showing it if he is." And Ashley detailed the
circumstance of the impressing of the horse. Seymour listened with a
look of searching, keen intentness.
"Baynell would never have done that in this world," he declared, "if you
had not been there to hear the neighing, too. Why, it stands to reason.
The family must have known the horse might whinny at any moment. They
relied on his winking at it, and he would have done it if you had not
been there. He took that pose of being so regardful of the needs of the
service because he has been favoring the Roscoes in every way
imaginable. Why, hardly anybody else has a stick of timber left, and
every day houses are seized for military occupation, and the owners
turned adrift, but _I_ know that when one of his men stole only a plank
from Judge Roscoe's fence, he had the fellow tied up by his thumbs with
the plank on his back for hours in the sun. That was for the sake of
_discipline_, my dear fellow--not for Judge Roscoe's plank. On the
contrary--quite the reverse!"
Seymour wagged his satiric head, unconvinced, and Ashley remembered
afterward that he vaguely wished that Baynell would not make so definite
a point about these matters, provoking a sort of comment that ordinary
conduct could hardly incur. Baynell ought to be in camp.